Is your design actually sustainable?
Sustainable design incorporates more than just thinking about how something is produced. True sustainability requires thought into the entirety of a products life cycle, from it's beginning to it's end.
Sustainable design creates long-term solutions and helps societies ensure the well-being of their people and harmony with the environment for generations.
A sustainably designed product or service is one that considers the entire lifecycle of the product during development, from manufacturing to disposal. A truly sustainable design is optimized for reuse (Sustainable Design, 2023).
A sustainable service, designed with participatory design principles, should provide what the user needs while reducing the use of non-renewable resources (Design Principals, 2016) (Sustainable Design, 2023) (User Needs, 2016).
We have to stop creating products that create great harm to the planet. We have to create products that can last for a long time and that can be repaired and upgraded when they become outdated or stop working. Alternatively, we can design as nature does. We can design in a way where the waste itself is a valuable substance that can be reused by nature.
Designers can develop energy-efficient apps that work on older devices to reduce energy consumption and slow the obsolescence of older devices, which causes more waste.
Now more than ever, designers are called on to rethink infrastructure, education and transportation to create more sustainable models on a national or even global scale.
Energy use is inevitable and the making of products. It is about the amount of resources and the residual impacts that these productions make. In thinking about life cycle of products, the most sustainable product can always be reused, they limit material usage, and limits scraps.
I was interested in reading that even digital products can become more sustainable. I had thought that digital meant its sustainable by nature but there are ways of making sure that the devices they run on use less resources as well.
For my capstone I have yet to decided the medium of my product. However, after reading this I know what I need to keep in mind when designing so my product does not create any more harm on the environment.
References
Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2023, March 16). What is Sustainable Design?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/sustainable-design
Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2016, June 5). What are Design Principles?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-principles
Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2016, June 5). What are User Needs?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-needs
Andrews Cooper, (n.d). Sustainable Design Strategies, Part 1: Embracing the Top 5 Opportunities. Andrews Cooper https://www.andrews-cooper.com/tech-talks/sustainable-design-strategies-embracing-the-top-5-opportunities/
